Intense Coverage in Arab Media of Golan Airstrike on Hezbollah

The Arab media is giving intense coverage to Sunday’s attack[1] just inside the Syria-Israel border, which was attributed to Israel. Jihad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah commander and son of notorious terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, was killed along with at least nine others in an airstrike Sunday against a convoy in the Syrian section of the Golan Heights.

Arab media reports indicate that the attack in Syria left the Iranian-armed and -funded Hezbollah frustrated because the terror group has been suffering heavy casualties recently in Syria as part of its fight alongside the forces of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

However, Lebanese commentators and politicians believe that Hezbollah and Iran do not want a new war that would shake all of Lebanon. According to the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir[2] (Arabic link), Hezbollah promises to take revenge, “but not in a hurry,” in order not to be drawn into a new war and a new front.

Officials close to Hezbollah are painting the airstrike as an attack against Syria and Lebanon in general[3] (Arabic link), thus trying to rally support for their position and put all the people of Lebanon in the same boat with Hezbollah.

Ibrahim al-Amin, a publicist close to Hezbollah, wrote an article[4] (Arabic link) in which he presented scenarios of a possible war between Hezbollah and Israel:

Hezbollah has human power of tens of thousands of fighters who train in a special and high-quality way… [Those] forces are prepared to carry out two types of missions: defensive mission aims to prevent the advance of the enemy offensive in Lebanon; and offensive mission, which is based on narrow or wide operations inside the occupied Palestine [Israel]… [In the next war, the group] will lunch about 4,000 or 5,000 rockets to Israel and destroy hundreds of targets in one day.

Hamas, the terrorist organization in Gaza also armed and funded by Iran, said the attack was a new attempt by Israel to disrupt security in the region and to “restore the image of its army, which crashed in front of the ‘resistance’ attacks in Gaza.”

On the other hand, opponents of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Middle East have chosen to blame the organization and to warn it of a new war that could bring new bloodshed to the unstable area. Lebanese MP Riad Rahhal told local radio[5] (Arabic link) that Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for a new war.

Western intelligence sources[6] said Sunday that Jihad Mughniyah was planning attacks meant to “kill soldiers, hit Israeli communities in the Golan Heights and kill Israeli civilians.” The sources said:

He was a man who stood at the head of a wide-scale terrorist infrastructure with direct sponsorship from Iran and direct connection to Hezbollah, which has already been acting against Israel in the Golan Heights.